Tables of statistics are apt to be tiresome affairs; but in the annals of the War Department, as part of the record of the American Army in the great war, there is a table of statistics that is replete with human interest. This is the table which depicts the activities of the salvage operations of the Army, both at home and abroad.
Until the war came to America and brought to us the necessity of being provident, thrift and economy could not be called characteristic American qualities. As virtues in the individual we were apt to despise them. Paris can live on what New York throws away, runs the old saying. For the prudent man we invented opprobrious names. Such names and phrases were but the surface outcroppings of a national tendency to be wasteful.
But the war came along to put a stop to waste and to raise thrift high in the esteem of America. Partly because of the mounting prices of food and clothing and partly because of well-organized and well-conducted propaganda on the part of various agencies of the Government, chief among them being the United States Food Administration and the Liberty Bond and War Saving Stamp organizations of the Treasury Department, America began to practice economy in the use of materials.
How much of the credit for the change can be claimed by the Government itself we may never know; but this may be said—in urging the people to save materials in their own homes, the Government did not, as it had done in previous wars, allow the traditional wastes of military campaigns. The Government practiced what it preached. It cleaned up its own back yard and utilized every scrap of useful material. It mended the shoes and clothing of the Army; it darned the socks; it tinkered the tin cans; it starved the garbage pails by economy in the mess kitchens and recovered the valuable components of garbage at rendering plants; it collected the junk; it swept the stables and put the manure on the land, and then produced crops from the increased fertility. All of these adventures in conservation and reclamation were known to the Army simply as Salvage; which after all was but the scientific attention which the Army paid to the "p's" and "q's" of military housekeeping—it was household economy on the scale of a family of 3,500,000 members.
The figures of the Army's thrift are most impressive. The figures of our war salvage are as follows:
[35]On articles dry cleaned in Government shops.
[35]On articles dry cleaned in Government shops.
[36]Receipts and operating credits.
[36]Receipts and operating credits.
A consolidation of these figures shows that the total amount returned to the Government in money value by the savings of the salvage service of the Army for the single calendar year of 1918 was $101,180,151. With this figure some interesting comparisons may be made.
In 1912, to meet every expense of the American standing Army, Congress appropriated $99,676,767.43; in 1913 the appropriations were $100,292,855.04. Salvage, reclaiming the materials once wasted and using them over again, saved enough in 1918 to have maintained the entire Military Establishment in 1912 or 1913.
But there is even a more striking comparison. During the fiscal year of 1898—the Spanish-American War year—the entire appropriations for the support of the Army amounted to $70,394,739.96. Salvage in 1918 saved $30,000,000 more than was appropriated to fight the Spanish-American War up to July 1, 1898, at which date the fighting was nearly over.
Take the cost of clothing the Army raised to fight against Spain, and add to it the appropriations for clothing the Army and equipping it with shoes, leather and rubber goods, and textile equipment for the years 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917, and you have a total Government expenditure of $100,050,271.65. The savings of salvage in 1918 could pay this entire cost with $1,129,880 to spare.
It cost $20,280,000 for the clothing and equipage of the Army for the year ending June 30, 1917, at which date the war with Germany had begun. Salvage in the United States alone in 1918 saved to the Government $17,967,416 more than this appropriation.
Salvage undertakings touched intimately every soldier in the Army. This service which taught economy in the use of materials could with equal facility operate a laundry or dry-cleaning plant, or run a farm, or drive a good bargain in the sale of junk, or return goods that did not meet specifications and be reimbursed for them.
Wherever the experts of the service saw a leak through which the Government's money might flow out, they plugged it. An innovation in warfare as we knew it, it had to fight its way against prejudice at the start, but it developed what formerly was waste and a liability into a tremendous asset. Yet when the armistice came salvage had only commenced to show its possibilities. It had merely scratched the surface, but it had opened up unlimited fields for utilizing worn-out or unserviceable products or by-products of war. It had saved thousands of tons of shipping space in the transportation of supplies to the American Expeditionary Forces by using over again in France the things that otherwise would have had to be replaced by new; it saved this tonnage at the time when every ton saved counted heavily. In this and in the saving of materials at a time when all the raw materials of the earth would scarcely meet the insatiable demands of Moloch, the value of salvage can scarcely be measured by the money figures of its record.
War salvage in the United States started on October 5, 1917, when the conservation branch was created in the Quartermaster Department. It started with an executive force of two commissioned officers and one stenographer. When the armistice was signed about 13 months later, the salvage service in the United States alone had a force of approximately 500 commissioned officers, 20,000 enlisted men, and 2,000 civilian employees.
In this period the method of clothing and feeding the American soldier had been revolutionized. The old way was to issue a uniform to a soldier and hold him responsible for the repair and cleaning of it. He owned his uniform and had to keep it in good condition at his own expense out of the $15 per month the Government paid him. The new way was for the Government itself to retain ownership of the uniform and to repair and clean it at public expense. The soldier was required to pay only for his laundry work at a uniform charge of $1 per month, much under what he would have had to pay at commercial rates.
Formerly the soldier had to repair his own shoes. The soldier prefers repaired shoes to new ones for campaign service because the former are broken in and are comfortable. After the salvage service was established the Government retained ownership of Army shoes and repaired them at Government expense.
Once the Army seldom conducted sales of the boxes and crates in which supplies were packed. Salvage undertook such sales, thereby bringing considerable revenue to the Army.
But in these and similar economies, it was not so much the saving of money that was important as it was the saving of materials at a time when the supply of all materials was scarcely adequate to the war demands. When our troops first reached France the officers were surprised at the emphasis placed upon salvage operations by the British and French armies. They were soon to learn that salvage was stressed because it supplied materials which were scarce. Glycerine, a component of high explosives, had become so short in supply that the British Ministry of Munitions paid as much as $1,250 a ton for it. The British army distilled its garbage and procured from the operation glycerine at a cost of $250 per ton. This was a financial saving of $1,000 a ton; but, more important, it supplied glycerine at the time when money did not count. The British Ministry of Munitions got the glycerine, which meant explosives for use against the Germans, which was the main thing.
The British appreciated the importance of salvage so much that one of the officers sent with the British mission to the United States early in the war was a salvage expert, included in the mission sothat we might early have the benefit of the British experience in this work.
Although the salvage service of America was authorized in the autumn of 1917, it was not until winter was declining into the spring of 1918 that the service became a working organization fully clothed with authority. Consequently its record was accomplished within a period of 9 or 10 months. The purpose and ideals of the service were embodied in its code, known as special regulations No. 77, promulgating rules and regulations for the conservation and reclamation of Army supplies and materials. The principal provisions of these regulations were as follows:
These regulations likewise—
Thus it may be seen that special regulations No. 77 were not only a charter for the salvage service but a code of conduct in economy and thrift for the soldier of the American Army. Although the regulations did not become official until midsummer of 1918, they had a profound effect in the few months before the fighting in Europe came to an end.
Prior to July 1, 1918, all reports of garbage collection, etc., in the military camps in this country indicated that the American soldier in training wasted on the average of 2 pounds of food per day. This was not excessive, judged by civilian standards, since our large cities, a great part of whose population are fed not nearly so well as soldiers were fed in the camps, show a food waste nearly as great.But the camp waste of food was regarded as excessive by the salvage officers. Special regulations No. 77 contained minute directions for conserving food in the camp kitchens. The result of these regulations was that in the four-month period beginning July 1, 1918, the average mess waste per man in the camps fell to 0.3 of a pound per day. Since there was an average strength of 1,500,000 men in training during these four months, the reduction of waste amounted to many thousands of tons of food.
These regulations also set up a salvage equipment for the use of the Army. As a rule each camp had a shoe-repair shop large enough to fix 400 to 500 pairs of shoes per day; a clothing-repair shop large enough to take care of the everyday mending of 30,000 troops; a hat-repair shop sufficient in size to restore the headgear of 30,000 men; and other miscellaneous shops.
But at the change of seasons there could be expected an exceptionally large turn in of worn-out clothing, and to handle these periodical floods of garments large base salvage plants were established at Fort Sam Houston, Tex.; Washington, D. C.; Atlanta, Ga.; New York City; Philadelphia; El Paso; and Newport News, Va.; with a base salvage plant for rejuvenating shoes at Jeffersonville, Ind. Smaller base plants were established at Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, and at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., and at Alcatraz Island, Calif. Other base plants to receive and classify and dispose of waste materials were established at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Fort Sam Houston, and Atlanta.
The shoe-salvage base plant at Jeffersonville Depot was more than a repair shop in the accepted sense of the term, for it became one of the most complete shoe factories to be found anywhere in the country. When this shop was being projected as a plant to take care of the overflow of worn shoes from the camps and depots, the United Shoe Machinery Co. agreed to furnish machinery sufficient to repair 2,000 pairs of shoes a day, supplying this equipment for a period of six months without any expense to the Government, except upkeep and the cost of supplies.
At the Jeffersonville shop shoes went through the mill from department to department much as machines are assembled in the familiar quantity-production manner. Shoes arriving were first counted, and then sorted and graded as follows:
The shoes arriving at this plant were in a condition that would have resulted in their being discarded altogether in the old days. The experience at Jeffersonville showed that 65 of each 100 pairs arriving at the factory could be repaired, and repaired cheaply. In January, 1919, of 132,112 pairs of shoes sorted, 45,000 were in irreparable condition and had to be thrown away. There were 11,475 pairs of class 2 shoes, 74,362 pairs of class 3, and 1,175 pairs of class 4.
From the sorting room the shoes went to the wash room, where they were disinfected and cleaned in a bath containing a solution of 40 ounces of formaldehyde and 1 pound of castile soap to each 10 gallons of water. After being washed the shoes were placed on rolling racks, each rack holding 24 pairs of the same size and width. The loaded racks were wheeled to the lasting section where lasts were inserted according to sizes.
Next, machines cut off the worn portions of the old heels, after which the shoes went to the stripping bench, where the old soles were removed and the shank pieces skived to prepare a smooth joint for the new half sole. The next process was welting. The welts were prepared, and tarred felt was glued to the old inner sole to fill out uneven parts and prevent squeaking. The next operation was to lay on the half sole in a setting of rubber cement. Another machine rough rounded the soles to conform with the shape of the shoes.
Then the shoes reached the stitching machines, where the soles were sewed on, and then the leveling machines, which smoothed out the wrinkles of the inner soles. The next step brought them to the heeling machines, where the complete heels were attached in one motion. Next, machinery for nailing soles and heels, and then the trimming machinery for smoothing off the work. The final mechanical operation was on the scouring and finishing machines. Meanwhile, if the shoes needed patching on the uppers, this work was done by women operating sewing machines.
The final process was to give the field shoe a thorough coat of waterproof dubbin. A good polish was put on the russet shoes. A split leather insole was inserted in each shoe to insure perfect smoothness of the bottom. A pair of laces was tied to each pair of shoes, and then the shoes were packed in boxes of 24 pairs each and turned in to the Army stores.
The Jeffersonville shop repaired 222,135 pairs of shoes in seven months of operation. Thousands of pairs of shoes were discovered to have been fitted too short. This was shown by the fact that many of the shoes were worn out entirely in the toes. A shoe that is too long will turn up at the toes, while one that is too short will stub with nearly every step taken.
On August 8, 1918, the Secretary of War authorized the expenditure of $5,287,852 for the construction of laundries to serve from20,000 to 40,000 men in each of 20 camps and posts. About this same time repair shops were authorized at each of the training camps and special dry-cleaning plants at Atlanta, Fort Sam Houston, El Paso, and Alcatraz Island. Before the armistice was signed many of these plants were in operation. In addition to these the salvage service eventually operated printing plants, wagon repair shops, and carpentry shops, so that at the time the armistice was signed there was hardly anything of quartermaster issue not subject to rehabilitation by the salvage division.
Each shoe-repair shop at the training camps had equipment sufficient to repair 500 pairs of shoes per day, utilizing the services of 40 to 50 men. When the shops were officially authorized, an inventory of the Army's old shoes showed there were approximately 1,500,000 pairs on hand in need of rehabilitation. In order to assist the camp shops in the work, the salvage service brought between 50 and 55 shoe factories into the reclamation effort, these private factories repairing about 500,000 pairs until the camp shops were able to catch up.
Because of the shortage of linen thread it was decided to use nails for attaching half soles, particularly in the repair shops in France. More than 2,500 nailing machines were bought and shipped to the American Expeditionary Forces. The American Expeditionary Forces adopted the English system of company cobblers and regimental repair shops. Upward of 11,000 cobblers' kits were shipped to France. In July, 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces requested machinery for a base shoe-repair plant in France. This machinery was shipped considerably before hostilities ceased.
The service maintained a corps of civilian instructors, who traveled from camp to camp and improved the efficiency of the Army cobbling. The accumulation of worn shoes at the embarkation camps was sent to various contractors for repairs. By November, 1918, the shoe-repair facilities of the Army had reached full operation, 500,000 pairs of shoes being repaired that month, a figure representing all the repairing required by 1,500,000 men. All shoe-repairing activities were under the direction of Philip H. Fraher, who was assisted by Joseph Caunt, of Pasadena, Calif., a retired shoe manufacturer with a wide experience both in this country and in England.
In its clothing-repair activities the salvage service dry-cleaned uniforms and woolen equipment, repaired and renovated hats, and reclaimed outer clothing and underclothing.
For the first time in dry-cleaning history, a method was worked out to destroy all living organisms and a considerable amount of bacteria, a process which is likely to have a lasting effect in the dry-cleaning industry. The specifications of this process were theresult of cooperative laboratory research by the Bureau of Standards, the Public Health Service, and the salvage division. In addition to destroying germs and bacteria the process also thoroughly cleansed the garments. Experts from the salvage division were on hand to see to it that the various contractors lived up to the standard specifications. The authorized Government-owned dry-cleaning plants, which were to be the last word in what such establishments should be, were not completed, due to the signing of the armistice. Dr. Harry E. Mechling, a graduate physician and president of the Swiss Cleaners & Dyers, of Louisville, Ky., was in charge of the Army's dry-cleaning activities.
In the repair of clothing the service received much assistance from the Red Cross. Local Red Cross units in the vicinity of camps worked in conjunction with the officers of the salvage service in the reclamation of such garments as woolen shirts, underclothing, sweaters, helmets, socks, and gloves.
The base salvage plants at Atlanta and Fort Sam Houston reached a high state of efficiency in the repair of clothing. Shipment after shipment was made from such congested centers as Newport News and Hoboken to these plants, and within a comparatively short time the property was ready for reshipment and reissue. Capt. Harvey A. Rosenthal, a graduate of the first officers' training school, and in civil life in the clothing business, was in charge of clothing repairs.
All of the camps had shops for renovating and repairing hats. The average cost for repairing a hat was 35 cents, whereas the lowest contract price was 65 cents, and the quality of work at the Government shops was far better than that obtained from private contractors.
The following table gives an idea of the approximate saving to the Government in hat-repair operations:
Mr. E. Leroy Cummings, of the John B. Stetson Co., of Philadelphia, was in charge of hat-repair activities.
Extensive repairs to canvas materials were confined to the base plants at Philadelphia, El Paso, Fort Sam Houston, and Atlanta, and, on a smaller scale, at Jeffersonville. Minor repairs were conducted at camp shops, some of which were only in the course of constructionwhen the armistice was signed. Tents were generally reconditioned while standing. Patches to tents were attached by means of a nitrocellulose cement, the best cement for the purpose which the salvage service found, being called vanite. Experiments at the Bureau of Chemistry resulted in the adoption of three waterproofing compounds named Preservol, Candeline, and Truscon. These compounds were applied to both standing tents and tents which had been taken down, with complete and effective results.
Laundering was not a new activity for the War Department, since when the war was declared the Government already owned 14 small steam laundries. Later the Government went into the laundry business on the scale demanded by the great chain of training camps, building cantonment laundries at a cost of approximately $300,000 each. Experienced laundrymen were placed in charge of camp laundries. Through the cooperation with the Government's insect experts of the Bureau of Entomology, laundering processes were worked out successfully to disinfect all clothing while washing it and to free it from vermin without shrinking fabrics or causing other damage. Government laundries during the war operated 24 hours per day with three labor shifts and cleaned an average of 10,909,850 pieces of clothing monthly, with gross receipts of over $500,000 per month, approximately half of which was profit.
One of the most interesting features of laundry activity was the development of mobile laundry units for overseas use near the front. The men to operate these units were trained in a special school at Camp Meigs, D. C. Each mobile unit required a crew of 37 men. The men of the Army nicknamed these special troops the "Fighting Chinamen."
The need of the American Expeditionary Forces for wash-up and delousing stations at the front, so that even troops engaged in battle might have clean clothes, called the mobile laundry units into being. The first experimental equipment was designed and constructed early in 1918. After that the salvage service produced 50 others, 32 of which were shipped to France.
Each unit consisted of a large steam tractor and four trailers, an outfit which on the road made up a train over 100 feet long. The trailers could be placed together in the field to form a building 30 feet long and 28 feet wide, the tractor acting as the power plant. On the trailers were washing machines, wringers, drying machines, tanks for water and soap, a pump, and a dynamo to supply electric lights. One of these plants working 24 hours per day could do the washing of 10,000 men. This unit was designed by officers of the salvage division.
ONE OF THE ARMY'S MOBILE LAUNDRIES.
ONE OF THE ARMY'S MOBILE LAUNDRIES.
ONE OF THE ARMY'S MOBILE LAUNDRIES.
INTERIOR VIEW OF MOBILE LAUNDRY.
INTERIOR VIEW OF MOBILE LAUNDRY.
INTERIOR VIEW OF MOBILE LAUNDRY.
SALVAGING ARMY HATS IN FRANCE.This photo was taken at Tours, France, 1 February, 1918.
SALVAGING ARMY HATS IN FRANCE.This photo was taken at Tours, France, 1 February, 1918.
SALVAGING ARMY HATS IN FRANCE.
This photo was taken at Tours, France, 1 February, 1918.
SALVAGING ARMY SHOES IN FRANCE.Picture taken at Tours in March, 1918, showing a few shoes worn out by the soldiers overseas.
SALVAGING ARMY SHOES IN FRANCE.Picture taken at Tours in March, 1918, showing a few shoes worn out by the soldiers overseas.
SALVAGING ARMY SHOES IN FRANCE.
Picture taken at Tours in March, 1918, showing a few shoes worn out by the soldiers overseas.
Army laundry activity was in charge of three New York laundrymen: J. E. Dann, president of the Pilgrim Laundry, of Brooklyn, and his assistants, William Longfelder, of H. Kohnstamn & Co., and E. D. Tribbett, of the American Laundry Machinery Co.
Wherever possible waste materials were reclaimed for use by the Army instead of being sold as junk. This was particularly true of bags and burlap. Hundreds of thousands of bags and great quantities of burlap furnished by the salvage division were utilized for army purposes. Without salvage, all of this would have been thrown away or sold at junk prices. When the fighting ended the base salvage plant at Chicago was being equipped to repair about 15,000 bags daily.
The purpose of garbage separation was threefold—the reduction of mess waste, the increase in revenue to the Government, and the recovery of glycerine contents for military purposes. Before the war with Germany the Army regulations required the burning of garbage at camps. When the great training camps were established, the Government adopted generally the policy of selling garbage to contractors, except at Camps Fremont, Hancock, McClellan, Sevier, and Shelby, where it was incinerated. Originally contracts had been let on a per-man basis, the contracts extending for several months, comparable to municipal contracts for the disposal of garbage. Later on, however, the policy was adopted of letting contracts for periods of one month only, since the number of men at the camps was continually increasing, and the garbage grew correspondingly bulkier. It is estimated that this change in contracting saved the Government considerably over $400,000. Contract sale prices ranged from 1 cent to 9 cents per man per month, the latter price in most cases including the manure from the stables.
With a view to obtaining glycerine, the War Department authorized the construction of 16 garbage-rendering plants at the larger concentration centers, but only one, that at Camp Lee, was actually constructed, since it was determined later by an investigation of our national resources that the amount of glycerine to be obtained in this manner did not justify the expenditure of the money. Also the project of establishing piggeries at camps was abandoned, after investigation by the salvage service, since it would have required 18 months to clear the investment, and in the meantime the Government would have been deprived of revenue from the sale of garbage.
The disposition of waste materials was under the direction of Louis Birkenstein, of Chicago, assisted by R. D. Cunningham, of Troy, N. Y.
In response to an insistent demand that farms be operated at various camps, the salvage division, on May 15, 1918, secured $60,000 from the vocational fund for the training of soldiers and allotted sums to 15 camps.
On November 4, 1918, Congress appropriated $250,000 for the same purpose, but little of this money was expended. The total acreage under cultivation in 1918 was 3,483, and the equivalent revenue derived from the camp farms amounted to $108,000. The farm work was under the direction of Capt. Henry G. Parsons, a practical and scientific farmer.
Salvage activities, in general, in the United States were under the direction of Philip W. Wrenn, who was chief of the salvage division during the most active period of its existence.
Salvage in France was under the direction of the chief quartermaster with the American Expeditionary Forces. At first, it was undertaken in a smattering way, but as the American Army grew in size, salvage increased, until the salvage service became one of the features in the field, with thousands of men and women working in salvage activities, with salvage plants, branches, and depots, large and small, saving, repairing, conserving, and putting into shape, ready for reissue, materials of all sorts and descriptions. The word "salvage" became the watchword and pride of many an organization at the front.
Each field army had its chief salvage officer. Each division of troops had its salvage organization under a salvage officer. Each organization had its salvage dump, in which it took a just pride, and there was a spirit of friendly rivalry between different organizations as to which could save the most for the Government.
In the flood times of battle, when waste materials piled up on the fields, the regular salvage specialists were assisted in various ways. In some divisions the regimental bands were designated to act as emergency salvage companies. Sometimes after an engagement whole battalions and regiments were enlisted to clean up an area, and there is one instance on record where a wise general of the American Expeditionary Forces turned out his entire field army to clean up for salvage the area which it had just won from the enemy. The salvage service in France handled not only the recovery of quartermaster supplies, but it also collected and disposed of all materials captured from the enemy, including ordnance materials, and also all materials abandoned by our own troops and found on the battle fields. When troops moved into combat they took with them only such equipment as they could carry on their backs or on the meager transportation facilities allowed. Thus they frequently left behind them an enormous quantity of their possessions; including personal baggage. The salvage units went through such areas, visited every billet, and collected all Government and personal property and cared for it. As an indication of the magnitudeof this work, there was one salvage dump in France 40 acres in area piled as high as goods could be thrown from trucks.
The salvage operations in France were conducted over an area of 4,000 square miles, and there were approximately 4,000 men in the salvage service field force. The various salvage depots and shops in France occupied a floor space of 736,000 square feet and had a personnel of 11,632 on December 31, 1918. Even before the war, the Quartermaster Corps of the Army was a good-sized organization, yet there were more French women and girls mending clothing for the American Army in France at one time than there were commissioned officers and enlisted men in the whole Quartermaster Service before the war.
Clothing generally for the American troops in France was repaired at special shops and at the homes of seamstresses in the small towns and communes. Each town had a forewoman who distributed the damaged clothing, after it had been disinfected and laundered, and kept all counts. There were 880 of these home workers, nearly all of them from needy families. The best record for darning socks was made by an old French grandmére, aged more than 80.
Numerous soldiers were discovered in the American Expeditionary Forces who were unfit physically for the hard service on the front line. These were permitted to go into the various salvage depots and shops, where they learned to be shoemakers, harness makers, saddle makers, wood workers, painters, metal workers, tailors, laundrymen, electricians, mechanics, checkers, warehousemen, etc., occupations in which many of them expected to engage after their separation from the military service.
The salvage troops in France were in five classes—the salvage headquarter detachments, depot battalions, field salvage battalions, laundry units, and the clothing and bathing units. One of the last named was attached to each division to handle field bathhouses and delousing and disinfecting plants, to receive old clothes, and to issue new or reclaimed serviceable garments.
The ordnance property salvaged in the field in the period between January 1, to October 31, 1918, included 5,000,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition, 71,909 shell of the 75-millimeter size, and 16,195 of the 155-millimeter size, more than 32,000 rifles, and 21,000 machine guns and automatic rifles. The unexploded or "dud" shell is a menace to life, and the duty of destroying these in immense quantities fell to the salvage service.
Some of the salvage squads in the field were composed of men who through lack of education or lack of knowledge of the English language were unable to do front-line service. They were largely composed of American troops of alien birth.
The divisional salvage squads sorted the materials at the railhead dumps for shipment to the various depots. When trucks brought up supplies to the front and unloaded, the salvage detachments there filled them up again with all sorts of materials which had been picked up, and the trucks carried their loads back to the railheads, the railroad stations of the division. This queer conglomeration of trash consisted of everything from a hairbrush to a 77-millimeter enemy gun. To show the sorts of articles that are picked up in an area over which an army has fought, there is given here the following list of items selected at random from the check of a salvage shipment from the railhead of the Twenty-sixth Division on August 12, 1918:
The kitchen economics branch of the salvage branch of the American Expeditionary Forces in the recovery of fats and glycerine and other kitchen by-products during the month of September, 1918, saved $57,404.19 to the Government. The value was increased in October to $109,013.84, and in November to $120,158.63. In addition to this saving, kitchen salvage in October produced over 25,000 pounds of grease and over 14,000 pounds of dubbin for waterproofing shoes. This branch of the service also had the disposition of unserviceable food supplies, entailing the salvage of large quantities of flour, sugar, rice, and beans damaged in transportation or injured by exposure to weather so as to become unfitted for troops. Such vegetables as peas and canned corn, unsatisfactory for use, were dried and ground and sold for chicken feed or hog feed, bringing in a considerable revenue.
The question of laundering for the field hospitals, particularly after hard fighting, was a vital one. During the month of December, 1918, a total of 7,811,566 pieces of laundry was handled by the laundry branch of the salvage service. This included 3,700,000 pieces for the hospitals alone. The American Expeditionary Forces were required to establish three large shops for mending clothing sent to the laundries.
OUTPOST AND FIELD WIRE SALVAGED FROM BATTLE AREA, GIEVRES, FRANCE.
OUTPOST AND FIELD WIRE SALVAGED FROM BATTLE AREA, GIEVRES, FRANCE.
OUTPOST AND FIELD WIRE SALVAGED FROM BATTLE AREA, GIEVRES, FRANCE.
PORTION OF OPEN STORAGE YARD. SAPPINETS FOR TEMPORARY LINES IN FOREGROUND, CABLE REELS IN BACKGROUND.
PORTION OF OPEN STORAGE YARD. SAPPINETS FOR TEMPORARY LINES IN FOREGROUND, CABLE REELS IN BACKGROUND.
PORTION OF OPEN STORAGE YARD. SAPPINETS FOR TEMPORARY LINES IN FOREGROUND, CABLE REELS IN BACKGROUND.
GERMAN PRISONERS WORKING FARM LAND.
GERMAN PRISONERS WORKING FARM LAND.
GERMAN PRISONERS WORKING FARM LAND.
100 SOLDIERS HARVESTING SNAP BEANS AT CAMP GORDON FARM NEAR ATLANTA, GA.
100 SOLDIERS HARVESTING SNAP BEANS AT CAMP GORDON FARM NEAR ATLANTA, GA.
100 SOLDIERS HARVESTING SNAP BEANS AT CAMP GORDON FARM NEAR ATLANTA, GA.
The salvage service in France rendered a peculiar service in being the repository for lost articles. The baggage branch of the salvage service worked in close cooperation with the Army transportation service, railroad transportation service, the central records office, the graves registration service, the effects depot, the French railroad officials, and other agencies which might assist them to recover and handle all lost baggage for the members of the American Expeditionary Forces or for their heirs in the United States.
The garden service of the American Expeditionary Forces was operated as a separate branch of the Quartermaster Corps, but a word about its work may not be amiss here. In addition to gardens at the camps and hospitals in France, there was a large central farm at Versailles, near Paris, where American officers and men were assembled to learn intensive farming before being sent to the various stations to assume charge of garden work. This service was composed entirely of men who had been wounded or gassed, or were otherwise physically unfit for service at the front. The garden operations provided welcome additions of fresh vegetables to the American Expeditionary Forces' diet and also gave many Americans an insight of the French methods of intensive farming.
The 85,000 German helmets used in advertising the American Government's fifth war loan—the Victory loan of April, 1919—were all collected and shipped to the United States by the salvage service of the American Expeditionary Forces. In fact the immense quantities of dunnage and junk collected by the service are expected to be of untold historic value as time goes on. Various historical societies and museums are taking steps to secure collections of this war material.
Civilians in Europe are now wearing shoes built originally for American troops, later worn out by them, and still later reconditioned by the salvage service in France. A large number of these shoes recently sold for approximately $4.30 a pair. Since the average total cost to repair shoes was $1.05 a pair, the Government realized a net gain of $3.25 from every pair of these shoes.
In connection with the conservation of waste materials the salvage service conducted a considerable manufacturing enterprise in France. It turned waste into a large number of small articles, such as metal markers for graves or effects of deceased soldiers, sheet tin (this from discarded tin containers) for lining the stables at the remount depots, large shipping bags, cement sacks, collar ornaments, divisional insignia, brassards, overseas caps, guidons, curtains for engine cabs, and many other things. The service took discarded campaign hatsand old uniform and overcoat cloth and made hospital slippers with cloth tops and felt soles.
Such things as waste cotton scrap, waste paper, shredded rope, tin cans, and woolen rags collected in France were saved and sold, but nothing was sold that could be utilized for repairing or manufacturing purposes. Leather scrap was used to make leather straps or shoe laces, and the worst of the leather scrap was burned at the power plants of the salvage depots as a fair substitute for coal. Old harness, books, small scraps, leather washers, and the like, canvas and burlap scrap, went to the camouflage screen makers. Woolen rags were shredded and used over again for making cloth. Cotton rags too poor for other purposes went to the paper mills. Rubber scrap became new rubber material. Nothing which had a value was allowed to go to waste.
The salvage depot at Tours, France, alone in the period from March to November, 1918, inclusive, produced goods to the value of $19,383,353.58, at a total expense of $268,955.37, giving the Government a net profit of $19,114,398.21.
The value of all this work went far beyond the value of the figures in dollars and cents, which is the only concrete way in which it can be expressed. The saving in raw material alone which it effected was an important factor in the war; yet of even greater service was the salvage production of materials, particularly ordnance materials, which took much time to manufacture at home and after that required a long haul to get them to the American Expeditionary Forces. Some of the materials recovered on the battle field were scarce and hard to get, and every pound of them recovered added that much to the power of the American Army in France.